Bridge Commander Central
BC Forums => BC Modding => Topic started by: gdata on April 03, 2009, 08:59:42 AM
-
Recently there has been a discussion on the Bethsoft forums, whether it is possible to "unite" all Star Trek Modding Communities or not. The recent events with Filefront almost having been shut down, showed again that there does not seem to be a connection between our community, because almost every site tried to go its own way. I know there are many modders in both communities holding a grudge against the other community (talking about BC and Legacy specifically), but my question is why? I know many of you expected something else than Legacy, maybe even a Bridge Commander 2 or a third Armada game, but is that a reason for despise each other? Is our intention not all the same? To make the game better than it is! I think we should try to and can get closer to each other. Now how can we do that? What about releasing work not only on BC Files or Legacy Files, but also for the other sites?
So let's say we (nEw-GEN) make a new model and release it on Legacy Files and also create ports to Bridge Commander and Armada? Doesn't that sound good? (We Legacy modders also know how to use max :D)
I guess some of you might wonder why we don't do so already? The problem is we don't have modders who can mod for BC in our team, we would love to see all of our work in Bridge Commander though and we're already putting efforts into doing so, but getting a ship ingame is obviously way more difficult and time consuming than it is in Legacy.
I'm not sure whether the same applies for you BC modders or at least some of you, but if you are interested in distributing your mods for different games, we would love to bring your stuff into Legacy...and believe me, this is not opportunism, it's simply the sense of community that might have been missing in the last years.
And before I come to an end I would like to mention that I do not intend and want to start a discussion on boycotting Legacy or change modders mind whether they want their stuff in Legacy or not, but let you know that this could be done if people were interested.
-
I think it's how people's minds are geared. If you're set on making stuff for BC, then it loses its shine if it goes to another game. It's purpose is for the original idea, not for advancing on it. You also want know the community it goes to. If Wiley suddenly made a mod for Legacy, they might react differently to how he expects cos he's used to BC.
-
His ships are currently being ported to Legacy.
They won't react different there. "Great mod is great" :lol:
And I think both communities could improve a great deal with a trade like that.
I mean, we have a lot of ships (canon ones) that are not available to BC. And the other way round.
-
i have full confidence that Excalibur will unite many people from many different communities... tho it will be a while before STE will be out...
in the meantime, tho, i think gdata's idea is an excellent one :)
there have been times in the past where communities would clash, and i never understood that... we all love Trek, we all love gaming - all of us from different communities have more in common than not, and i think it would be awesome to bridge the gaps and come together; only good things can come from that :D
-
Biggest problem for BC-modders over at STL would be the smoothing. :P
Legacy is really special when it comes to that. :lol:
Oh hey, little treat for everyone:
-
It's about time you got that ingame. Looks nice. 8)
-
Still struggling with the sounds of the new weapons. ;)
-
im gonna move this thread over to BC Modding; i think it would do better there :)
-
Yopyop, you had any luck fixing the Nova yet? Jb said it was screwed up when you imported it. I'm pretty sure its on Milkshapes end though. If you add me on MSN, we can try using some other formats, see what works.
-
it's more than the difference in how one mods the game, or disappointed expectations. there was a feeling after Legacy came out, that it would overshadow BC, and to some extent it has, many modders have moved completely from BC to L. One reason I think BCmodders don't like legacy is that in a lot of ways, BC has more potential than L, it might not have all the fancy shaders and what not, but it is far easier to mod. Also quite a few of our more prolific modders have been discouraged by actions of certain members of the L community, namely the people behind UU, because of their porting BC mods to L without permission. I don't know if I would boycott L because of UU, but, if I was a serious modder like DJ, and I saw my ship in another mod, without any mention of me, I would get pretty upset too.
-
Yopyop, you had any luck fixing the Nova yet? Jb said it was screwed up when you imported it. I'm pretty sure its on Milkshapes end though. If you add me on MSN, we can try using some other formats, see what works.
He said, that he wanted to to fix it.
I did not have any time to take a closer look myself, yet.
it's more than the difference in how one mods the game, or disappointed expectations. there was a feeling after Legacy came out, that it would overshadow BC, and to some extent it has, many modders have moved completely from BC to L. One reason I think BCmodders don't like legacy is that in a lot of ways, BC has more potential than L, it might not have all the fancy shaders and what not, but it is far easier to mod. Also quite a few of our more prolific modders have been discouraged by actions of certain members of the L community, namely the people behind UU, because of their porting BC mods to L without permission. I don't know if I would boycott L because of UU, but, if I was a serious modder like DJ, and I saw my ship in another mod, without any mention of me, I would get pretty upset too.
And that#s why they had their stuff removed from STL-F. ;)
-
whatever drama that occurred in the past, i think should be left there...
ok so there were some clashes between communities, fine... perhaps the differences have been going on too long now...
in light of the recent FF scare, i think things got shaken up a bit for every community; and maybe things can settle back down a little differently... i think that a bridge between communities and collaborating so as to make everyone even better than before - everyone wins... the bigger picture is what is important, not just petty squabbles and minor differences...
-
i've come from legacy too as both gdata and yopyop will tell you, as im the offical CJG liason *ambassador* to aftermath and bc, i feel that BC as a place has bettered me, with the help of brex, adonis and Marky D my skill's as a modler and the quality of my mesh's have improved 10 fold in the last 3 month's i've been here. i feel we can both learn alot from each other
-
hey if I had any skill modding [Legacy], I would gladly release for both communities.
-
hey if I had any skill modding [Legacy], I would gladly release for both communities.
Well, that's the problem, but what I suggested was Legacy people getting BC stuff ingame and BC people getting Legacy stuff ingame...unless you are a uber-modding-monster and have the time and skill to mod both games ;).
-
It all sounds good from where I am sitting, will it happen? this man says it won't :?
Although I wish it could. 8)
-
To be honest, I was hoping for Filefront to step aside and lead to a combined Trek modding site. So that various game communities can showcase their work for the others to see and we can have friendly competition instead of dull dislike for each other.
-
i think if you can get more people bringing ship designs to the table and critting each others work then that is only a good thing, as it helps artists get better.
-
It all sounds good from where I am sitting, will it happen? this man says it won't :?
Although I wish it could. 8)
Well, the fact that you and FOAS post here shows that relationships between the BC and SFC communities have become a little closer lately.
About other communities: the KA one is quite dead, the Legacy community seems to be in a state of civil war among the different modding teams (at least that's what it looks from reading the Bethesda forums), Ef is an FPS so they focus in different things... It's not an easy task, even if everyone wants to do it.
-
civil war?
Well... I've never been on the BethSoft-Forums, so I don't know what's happening there. ^^
-
I for one like both games, but I have not played Legacy, not because the Game , But because the computer system I use, it is ancient [2003], for computers that's old,.
Legacy and BC are BOTH trek, so I never could understand the rift much either.
-
It all sounds good from where I am sitting, will it happen? this man says it won't :?
Although I wish it could. 8)
Well, the fact that you and FOAS post here shows that relationships between the BC and SFC communities have become a little closer lately.
About other communities: the KA one is quite dead, the Legacy community seems to be in a state of civil war among the different modding teams (at least that's what it looks from reading the Bethesda forums), Ef is an FPS so they focus in different things... It's not an easy task, even if everyone wants to do it.
It's hardly a "civil war" as much as it is frustrations between single individuals. No offense to them intended at all, that's what's been happening. All of the mod teams are currently working together at the moment in a kind of exchange program. There is no "war" as much as a little petty bickering between a few individuals. Something that has indeed happened here and anywhere else two intertubes cross one another.
-
I think it's all to do with the community. Like does Legacy have a BCC equivilant? If it does then I don't mind looking there. If the community is decent then I have no problem with given them my mods ("what mods?" I hear you ask lol).
-
I think it's all to do with the community. Like does Legacy have a BCC equivilant? If it does then I don't mind looking there. If the community is decent then I have no problem with given them my mods ("what mods?" I hear you ask lol).
We do not have a massive fan-owned site like this, but we do use the official forums that Bethesda has no intention of removing in the near future. It has a section devoted to modding in general (same as other games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc). From there it's mostly progress reports from the TC mods who have their own websites (although their forums are not all that great).
-
There are several forums and websites for Legacy. The Bethesda site, the filefront forums, then cjg and I think Aftermath is hosted on star-trek-games.com. We tried to create an equivalent of bcc when it looked like FF would go down (we purchased the domain stl-central.com and set up a forum there), but people obviously weren't interested....so stl-central.com is now more or less our team forum...
Also, talking about civil war and working together. If you want to know what a civil war is you should've visited Legacy Files in Summer 2007...THAT was a civil war. Now things are pretty peaceful, but working together might be a little bit...well...exaggerated. Sometimes we get help and offer help to Aftermath, and Aftermath has finally got a peaceful relation to UUM, but that's all. (But that's my view of the situation. UUM and Aftermath might see things different.)
btw: did not anyone request tiptop's TOS ships (link (http://legacy.filefront.com/file/TOS_Xperience_Pack;88703)) to be ported to BC? I think someone from BCC asked when they were released.
-
Would love to see those TOS ships released for BC. I especially like that "TOS Miranda" type, with the square stardrive on top.
-
It's hardly a "civil war" as much as it is frustrations between single individuals. No offense to them intended at all, that's what's been happening. All of the mod teams are currently working together at the moment in a kind of exchange program. There is no "war" as much as a little petty bickering between a few individuals. Something that has indeed happened here and anywhere else two intertubes cross one another.
Ok, I was somewhat joking with the "civil war" part :P
-
:arms: Not to be the grandad, im sure their are people here who have been on ST Modding sites allot longer than I have, but I have been modding Trek Games since 2001 and their is always some issue that stops forums and gaming communities coming together... it kinda always comes down to
FLEETS :arms:
It does, no matter what.. not flaming, or starting anything here, but fleets drive forums and forums drive the mods / games :?
BINGO
-
Would love to see those TOS ships released for BC. I especially like that "TOS Miranda" type, with the square stardrive on top.
Well we need a hardpointer then. I have the model on my harddrive and can convert the textures to tga and the models to nif.
-
getting a ship in bc is far easier than legacy, because you don't need to do all that extra crap to the model, which means modeling skills are not needed by the modder. Honestly, I'd like to help but it seems as though some elgacy modelers aren't all that willing to prep the ships (ridding them of elgacy related model parts, fusing the regisrty to the ship, and sending tga because dds wont open here)
If they're willing to prep the ships, as they are already the experts on what is the model and what is the "other stuff" having put it there themselves it'd go alot easier.
As far as TOS, I have a tos mod, but I just don't have time to do all the work on it myself. Plus, I've lost some of the atra hasis ships I planned to use and I don't need any more feds. Once that mod is done there will be a basis for me to do more feds..I don't know what anyone elses weapons are set to so I amde my own ballance scale that works only within the tos era.
-
Well, I doubt it's easier to get a ship in BC than in Legacy. Also in Legacy you don't need modelling skills, all you need to know is how to place joints in Milkshape. Well, BC mods aren't prepped for Legacy as well, we always have to spent hours with smoothing the BC models, but that's not what this discussion is about. If you want I can export you a few models to nif and send the textures in tga. And talking about the registries. Registries work in Legacy quite different. They are put on faces that are sligtly above the normal texture and the alpha channel defines what's visible or not. In BC the registries are merged with the texture itself. So the question is do you want a lot of large texture files, since you need a new texture for every registry or do you want only one registry avialable.
-
You can add smooting in BC, if memory serves, I do know that Milkshape doesn't (properly) understand that smoothing though, so it's entirely possible it's an issue with the (nif) importer.
-
Not entirely.
It's more like a combination of Legacy, Milkshape and the Importer that's causing the trouble ;)
-
Not entirely.
It's more like a combination of Legacy, Milkshape and the Importer that's causing the trouble ;)
Yea, it seems like Milkshape is messing up the normals. Either when importing or exporting nif.
-
Well, I doubt it's easier to get a ship in BC than in Legacy. Also in Legacy you don't need modelling skills, all you need to know is how to place joints in Milkshape. Well, BC mods aren't prepped for Legacy as well, we always have to spent hours with smoothing the BC models, but that's not what this discussion is about. If you want I can export you a few models to nif and send the textures in tga. And talking about the registries. Registries work in Legacy quite different. They are put on faces that are sligtly above the normal texture and the alpha channel defines what's visible or not. In BC the registries are merged with the texture itself. So the question is do you want a lot of large texture files, since you need a new texture for every registry or do you want only one registry avialable.
Actually its easier to have the registry on a seperate UV map than the remainder of the saucer, Adonis does this very well.
-
But BC won't choose different registry files itself ^^
-
We got SDT for that. Don't we?
-
whatever, that's not what this discussion is about. ;)
-
whatever, that's not what this discussion is about. ;)
Well, I just mentioned something that Legacy won't ever have. ;)
Unfortunately, I kinda doubt it that we could unite, say, BC and Legacy, on that particular front. There is no way to do that in Legacy without a lot of copy'n'pasting and possibly special (external) tools doing it for you. With the resulting maintenance mess afterwards from the automated copy'n'pasting.
-
What's SDT anyway? ^^
-
It's a little (and old) mod that I created that allows you to reuse the same model and most of the textures and only have textures that are unique on a per ship (plugin) base.
For example, one of the first ships to use it was SNS Galaxy, which used it to cut down on nearly 100MB (if memory serves me correctly) on models and textures. Possibly even more, since it included a crazy amount of ships in there. Which originally all had their own nif + full texture set.
SDT (starship Skinning and Damaging Tool) also allows you to predamage ships, like in the Single Player, but nobody has actually used that feature at this point.
-
ah with that full name i recognized it. ;)
-
Well, I doubt it's easier to get a ship in BC than in Legacy. Also in Legacy you don't need modelling skills, all you need to know is how to place joints in Milkshape. Well, BC mods aren't prepped for Legacy as well, we always have to spent hours with smoothing the BC models, but that's not what this discussion is about. If you want I can export you a few models to nif and send the textures in tga. And talking about the registries. Registries work in Legacy quite different. They are put on faces that are sligtly above the normal texture and the alpha channel defines what's visible or not. In BC the registries are merged with the texture itself. So the question is do you want a lot of large texture files, since you need a new texture for every registry or do you want only one registry avialable.
You shouldn't need to spend hours with mesh errors unless you are converting the legacy files. Start directly with the authors mesh, prior to porting/modding to legacy and you got a winner. I never do any smoothing on anything I port from sfc or anywehre else because I am incapable of doing so, and it's never really bothered anyone except a select few nitpickers.
-
Well, I doubt it's easier to get a ship in BC than in Legacy. Also in Legacy you don't need modelling skills, all you need to know is how to place joints in Milkshape. Well, BC mods aren't prepped for Legacy as well, we always have to spent hours with smoothing the BC models, but that's not what this discussion is about. If you want I can export you a few models to nif and send the textures in tga. And talking about the registries. Registries work in Legacy quite different. They are put on faces that are sligtly above the normal texture and the alpha channel defines what's visible or not. In BC the registries are merged with the texture itself. So the question is do you want a lot of large texture files, since you need a new texture for every registry or do you want only one registry avialable.
You shouldn't need to spend hours with mesh errors unless you are converting the legacy files. Start directly with the authors mesh, prior to porting/modding to legacy and you got a winner. I never do any smoothing on anything I port from sfc or anywehre else because I am incapable of doing so, and it's never really bothered anyone except a select few nitpickers.
I know...and believe me, we always try to get the max files, when we do. But in some cases we simply don't get them, due to different reasons (harddrive issues etc.). Anyway, let's get back on topic. So what files do you want converted Starforce? So that I can get the cleaned nif and the tga's to you.
-
Just briefly returning to the topic title: Unable to unite because some people steal mods. We already have one example on BCC (doesn't quite count because it isn't an ST community but its still a community using Trek stuff) and I know of another one but won't go into details 'caufor the sake of privacy.
-
Just briefly returning to the topic title: Unable to unite because some people steal mods. We already have one example on BCC (doesn't quite count because it isn't an ST community but its still a community using Trek stuff) and I know of another one but won't go into details 'caufor the sake of privacy.
BCC is primairly a community around a ST game.
Also, do you mean someone from BCC stealing? Or someone else stealing from someone on BCC?
-
A slight variation of possibility 2, MLeo. Again, I won't say anything else for privacy's sake.
-
I am sure there are theives in both communities. Lets not get into that, it's a topic for private discussion, not public. This is a modding forum and thus this thread should either discusss actual modding or be moved.
Mleo, I need to review what I have. Some long island stuff is here, I can load it but it's got crap in it. Then there was the black kite, which someone snet me (I need to find it) but no textures, and there was one other. This all got sent to me a couple weeks before the filesnetwork issue so I don't even remember where I put all the stuff. I am just getting my projects going again, but I defenetly want to be doing legacy stuff and if I get a modder or 2 assisting, revive my tos project which can include tos stuff (provided it's non-fed..I have enough fed..atleast for the primary mod..I can include more after the fact as add-ons)
-
If i remember correctly, we also have some ENT and TOS/TMP cardassian and dominon ships. ;)
-
If i remember correctly, we also have some ENT and TOS/TMP cardassian and dominon ships. ;)
They would need new textures, though...the current ones don't look all too good.
-
So this thread seems to be going in the way of converting meshes issue, we dont need a thread about this, I recieve PM's about this subject and am in contact with legacy peeps, about making meshes avail to Legacy... Im pretty certain if BCC members are contacted via pm and permissions sorted their is no issue.. :P
-
perhaps if uit's that big of a deal I should clean out the starforce productions board and use it as a team forum (public) for legacy porting..
-
Good idea. ^^
-
How many legacy authors have their models in virgin form, IE, when the main mesh is completed, before the damage related stuff is added ect? At this point, the only thing that should need to be done to them is textures/lightmaps saved as tga and the hole in the mesh (or whatever you call it) for the registrey dealt with. Also, at this point, one would assume it's probably in 3ds, max, or ms3d. Something easier to deal with than the post-conversion file type.
-
tiptop's stuff and almost everything from nEw-GEN should be available in either ms3d or max (maybe some files got lost, there are only two or three ships I know about, maybe like 5%). Then it should be pretty easy to delete the damage mesh, the hardpoints and the registry mesh, and place the registry on the main texture, before you convert it to tga. Most of the other Legacy modders should do it the same way, especially since there is no way of converting it back (at least not for us).
-
perhaps if uit's that big of a deal I should clean out the starforce productions board and use it as a team forum (public) for legacy porting..
agreed good idea 8)
-
perhaps if uit's that big of a deal I should clean out the starforce productions board and use it as a team forum (public) for legacy porting..
agreed good idea 8)
Did not read this the first time, yes good idea.
-
Let's not forget about the SFC Community. There are some ships that were released for Legacy that I'm sure us SFC people would love to see ported over to SFC format, and some of us, especially me, would be more than willing to help in the process.
Some ships I've worked on in collaboration with other people, namely ModelsPlease, have found their way into Legacy, and all permissions were obtained prior to release.
-
Oh I am sure nobody is forgetting, it just wasn't brought up because the thread is in a forum for modding BC. For those who don't already know, however, http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/board,16.0.html is the place to go for SFC ports. It's also a great place for anyone to keep an eye on new ships being built that might end up here as well.
-
PM me if you want to port something from nEw-GEN to sfc.